Recently a government minister caused a fuss in the press (they’re very excitable) by taking her child out of a state school and putting the child into a public school (a fee paying school for any US readers) because the child was dyslexic. The fuss of course is all about whether the needs of dyslexic children are adequately met in the state sector.
This is not about that at all.
Of course we should try to meet the needs of “special needs children” in state schools, but don’t all children have ‘special needs’ ? I don’t know how things are today, but when I was at school teachers would often concentrate on the poorest students and ignore the brightest students. Probably the thinking was that the brightest students could pick up the education they needed on their own, which is true to an extent. However I know a number of bright children (myself included) who were not pushed to study as hard as they should have been.
What often happened is that bright children found some or many lessons boring when they were stuck in a lesson proceeding at the speed of the slowest child in the lesson. Boredom as is well known is the enemy of learning. You could frequently find bright children obtaining poorer results at exams than they should be capable of doing well at.
Obviously I’m prejudiced towards brighter children, but the same applies to all children … all children are ‘special needs children’ in that they all should have individual attention in their education.